Backbone
by rainwater tears
Summary: Cold and sleep don't mix. Jess thinks when there's nothing else to do.


Title: Backbone  
  
Author: Lizibit (Rainwater Tears)  
  
Summary: Cold and sleep don't mix. Jess only thinks when there's nothing else to do.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
A/N: AU at the end. Please review.  
  
___  
  
He didn't open his eyes until he heard their footsteps backing away from the car. He knew he wasn't ready to deal with a Gilmore. Especially not two Gilmores after a Friday night dinner.   
  
He wasn't quite sure what had possessed him to return to Stars Hollow. He knew he wasn't just there to get his car back. No one came back for a car. And he knew he wasn't there to see his mother, or even Luke. His mother didn't draw up any feelings for him, she was just that, just his mother, and he didn't think he could face Luke. Not after everything he had done to him. He had been a jerk.  
  
And that was just it. He HAD been a jerk. He had turned all the guilt that should have been weighing his own shoulders down onto Luke and Rory and even Lorelai. He knew he had caused more fights between them than anything else ever had, but he couldn't own up to that responsibility. Not even a little bit. That was too hard for Jess the tough guy. Jess, who could get buy working at Wal-Mart, who would make it that way, even if it meant never making much more than minimum wage.  
  
He kept replaying everything Rory had told him at the end of last year. Everything about how he'd messed up, about how she wasn't going to pine for him. About how she might have loved him. Her words had left him feeling inferior. She was the bigger person. She was moving on. And he had spent two weeks camping out on the matress his dad kept in the closet writing and rewriting letters to Rory. Trying desperately to express what the hell he had been thinking when he left her and Luke and school and his future behind. But in the end he couldn't. He couldn't figure out what words would be worthy of her, when she had conveyed everything perfectly to him. He had screwed up. He had to move on. She was.  
  
So he'd left. He'd left California with nothing gained except some knowledge about the father that had never mattered much to him anyway, and he'd started driving across the country. As he'd once told her, "I'll live where I live, I'll work when I need money, and I'll see where I end up." It had all seemed so much simpler then. He could create a future as it came to him. Who cared about school, about higher education? Rory did. And he wasn't Rory.  
  
Nevada had been fun, the casinos and the hookers. Not that he'd hired one, just watching them walk down the street was enough. Then came Arizona. Not much more than desert and old people. And New Mexico, Texas, and another string of states that he'd forgotten as he passed through them. He hadn't realized he was headed back to Connecticut until he was in Pennsylvania and he got a call from his mother.  
  
"Jess."  
  
"Lizzie."  
  
"How are you?"  
  
"Well, I'm breathing, so I figure it's a pretty good day."  
  
"Good. Listen. I know where your car is..."  
  
And then he was heading somewhere. The same place he had been headed all along. And this time he had something other than a smelly bus seat to look forward to when he was ready to leave. He hadn't expected Luke to catch him in the act. Then again, he had expected Luke to take care of his car to some extent, or at least not leave it to rust. Breaking down on the highway had not been fun. Pushing his car to the side had not been fun. Dealing with police and Bill the Crazy Tow Truck Driver from Hughes Brothers had not been fun. Facing Luke had not been fun. The first hour and a half spent in his car had not been fun. And most of all, hearing Rory's voice telling Lorelai she didn't want to deal with him had not been fun.  
  
Then again, since when was he worthy of fun. Or even amusment. Last he'd heard he was a terrible person. He was pretty sure that Stars Hollow was brimming with people ready to back up that statement. He figured Lorelai Gilmore and Taylor Doose might even get into a fist fight to be the first in line. He chuckled at the scene playing out in his head, and then turned over, hoping that a change of position might get some of his blood circulating and return a bit of the feeling to his toes. Realizing that was not going to happen, he pulled a book out of his bag, tucked into the well between the front and back seats and praised the Higher Powers That Be (also known as Taylor Doose) for making sure that no streetlamp in Stars Hollow ever went unlit.  
  
Before he'd finished the first page he heard a knock at his window. He looked up expecting to find Luke, or even Lizzie, he was shocked to see Rory there instead. Cracking the window he just stared at her, amazed that he was even able to look her in the eye, after everything he'd done to her. His lack of a response wasn't necessary as she was ranting by the time he'd even registered her presence.  
  
"I was going to let you just stay out here in the cold because I'm mad at you, which I'm sure you know, and because I don't really want to have anything to do with you anymore, but I realized that if I were to leave you here than I would be just as terrible of a person as you were last year, and I don't really want to stoop to that level so I sat on my bed and debated for about half an hour and then I walked halfway here and changed my mind and walked all the way back to my house before turning around again, so now that I'm here, at least in body if not entirely mentally, I am offering our couch. You may wake up in the middle of the night to my mother hovering above you with a butterknife, but it's probably more comfortable than this car and I guaruntee it's warmer."  
  
"Okay."  
  
And that was it. The entire conversation, before they were walking silently back to her house, where at least he would be able to feel all his body parts in the morning, so long as they hadn't been sawed of by Lorelai in the middle of the night.  
  
Lying there thinking half an hour later he realized that maybe this meant something. Not necessarily that she had forgiven him or that she was still (maybe) in love with him, but something. And he fell asleep smiling. For the first time in 9 months he was smiling.  
  
___  
  
It's not much, but it's something.  
  
-Lizibit. 


End file.
